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Until recently, full-fledged electric vehicles were little more than high-tech toys for the moneyed class. But while cars like the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i have lowered the price of EV entry, limited range remains the greatest challenge to wide acceptance. If it can’t get up and go whenever, wherever, the criticism goes, it can’t be considered a real car.

Arguments about two-car households and average American commutes aside, it’s true electric cars can’t yet do everything conventionally powered cars can. Sure, they can accomplish more than 90 percent of what the average American driver needs a car to do in a given year, but lacking the last 10 percent of functionality is an affront to our collective “Be Prepared” Boy Scout mentality.

But a growing network of DC Fast Charging stations on the West Coast is attempting to turn the range issue on its head. These fuel-pump-sized boxes can feed as much as 480 volts and 80 amps through a firehose-sized connector. They’re designed to add about 70 miles of range in less than a half an hour to a properly equipped electric car. Developed mostly in Japan, the ChaDeMo standard is the first fast-charging system out of the gate. So far, only the Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi i-MiEV can use the system. Although more than 1000 of these stations have already been installed around the world, other manufacturers are taking a wait and see approach until the current charging-standard war plays itself out.

So while most automakers have been slow to adopt the ChaDeMo fast-charging standard, that hasn’t stopped a network of dozens of stations from cropping up along the Interstate 5 corridor from southern Oregon to the Canadian border in Washington. Plans call for dozens more in California so that the entire corridor from Canada to Mexico will be fast charging electrified by the end of the year. And the state of Washington is taking it a step further by creating the nation’s first designated electric car tourism corridor.

Extending from Seattle into central Washington along U.S. Route 2 over the Cascade Mountains, the corridor was created to go beyond the major corridors and offer electric car drivers the ability to take their cars on real-world vacations. Central Washington towns such as Leavenworth, Wenatchee, and Chelan already get more than four million visitors from the Seattle region each year, according to the Washington Department of Transportation, which oversaw the funding of the public-private partnerships that governed the installation of the stations. To support the fast charging stations, several lower speed “Level 2” 240-volt charging stations have also been installed by tourism-related businesses such as hotels, wineries, and even a ski resort. When combined, the two types of stations are meant to allow electric car drivers to make the trip over the mountains and then stay and play in central Washington using the lower speed chargers to charge up overnight and the high-speed chargers to get extra juice during the day.

For the most part, these stations — built and installed by Aerovironment — were bought and paid for with Recovery Act funding, although the host locations in Sultan, Skykomish, Leavenworth and Wenatchee, Washington did have to expend some of their own resources to bring the sites up to snuff in terms of security and code. Each location was chosen in part for its access to consumer activities such as convenience stores, bathrooms, and coffee shops so that tourists have something to do while waiting the 20-30 minutes it takes to charge up.

“It just makes so much sense for people who are coming from British Columbia or Seattle to be able to drive this beautiful, scenic route in an electric car fueled by clean, green hydro power from one of the many dams in the region,” said Tonia Buell, project development and communications manager for Public/Private Partnerships at the Washington State Department of Transportation.

“We saw this network of stations as a pioneering economic and tourism opportunity and have been committed to the idea from the start. This is not just about sustainable transportation and helping our environment; this is about giving drivers real choices in what kind of vehicle is best for them without having to worry as much about how that vehicle will fit in their lives. Our ultimate goal is to ensure everybody in Washington has access to the state’s network of roads regardless of what car they choose to drive,” Buell said.

To celebrate the opening of the four stations along U.S. 2, a dozen electric-car drivers made the first full trek over the mountains on a sunny weekend in the middle of June, attending ceremonies at each station along the way. While some of them stayed the night in central Washington, many of them made the return trip that same day just to highlight the fact that a round trip could be done in one day.

Aside from the one Tesla Roadster with a range of 240 miles on one charge driven by Plug In America vice president Tom Saxton, 10 Leafs and one i-MiEV had to stop at each of three stations for about 25 minutes along the way in staggered runs. The charging stops added about an hour and 15 minutes to a one-way drive that normally takes two and a half hours. Participants said the longer trip was worth it.

“We constantly hear about how electric cars are good for us,” said Saxton at the opening ceremony for the Aerovironment ChaDeMo station in Sultan, Washington. “They’re good for the economy, they’re good for national security, they’re good for the environment — and I love all those things, but to me it sort of makes the electric car like a type of medicine you have to take to get rid of the flu. But the idea that the electric car is medicine is totally wrong. They are really fun to drive. You get smooth, instant acceleration, and your car is full with fuel every morning when you wake up. After a few months of that you start to realize that going to the gas station is kind of a pain in the butt. The stations on this route are the first step towards helping more and more people decide to take the electric car plunge and experience freedom from the pump.”

The Washington Department of Transportation and all of the EV driving participants said they were encouraged that the network of stations worked flawlessly and got each of them up over 4000 feet of elevation and back down on round trips that averaged about 250 miles. The only glitches had to do with a blown tire on a Leaf prior to the start of the rally, and one participant purposely pushing the Leaf past its limits on his way back to Seattle by skipping a charge opportunity.

“Given how well it all worked on the trip from Seattle to Wenatchee, I got overly confident on my way back and tried to skip a fast charge in Skykomish, but paid for it,” said Patrick Van Der Hyde, one of the Leaf drivers from the Seattle region. “My Leaf went into Turtle mode and then stopped about a mile from the Sultan station. Fortunately I was able to charge for 45 minutes from a 120-volt household outlet on the side of the road and then went on to Sultan where one quick charge got me all the way home. It was an adventure, but was no fault of the charging network. I should have fully charged in Leavenworth to make that attempt.”

While the network did the job without any glitches, events like Van Der Hyde’s highlight that the system is still fragile, although even gas cars can run out of juice when pushed past “empty.” And while one electric car tourism route in the Pacific Northwest clearly doesn’t come close to bridging that last 10 percent of functionality that gas-powered cars have, it is a sign of things to come.